Can Should a Christian listen to secular music? - the debate will never die. Rather than trying to convince you one way or another, how about a quick list of some great songs from each classification?

My Top Secular Songs

• Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam
• 80’s Music (the higher the hair the better)
• Anything Zeppelin
• Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional
• One and Pride - U2
• 90’s Grunge (Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, STP, Smashing Pumpkins, etc)
• Hey Jealousy - Gin Blossoms
• Ms. Jackson - Outkast
• You Enjoy Myself - Phish
• Informer - Snow (don’t judge, you love it too)

Honorable Mentions: Incubus, Live, Queen, Radiohead, Muse, 
Guilty pleasures: Deftones, Tupac, Biggie, Flogging Molly, Metallica, Motley Crue, Pantera, Primus, etc<

My Top Christian Songs

• Albertine - Brooke Fraser (see this post)
• Tomalo - Hillsong (Spanish version of Take It All)
• Mighty To Save - Hillsong
• You Never Let Go - Matt Redman
• Sweep Me Away - Charlie Hall
• Lifesong - Casting Crowns (anything Casting Crowns)
• Old School dc Talk (Luv Is a Verb, Nu Thang, etc)
• Studying Politics - Emery
• Every New Day - Five Iron Frenzy
• Many Relient K songs
• I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever - Delirious?

Honorable Mentions: Lecrae, Newsboys, old POD, KJ 52, Chris Sligh

If you’re really interested in finding out if it’s ok for a Christian to listen to secular music, pray about it. Surely God will reveal himself to you. Another good resource is this list from Greg Surratt: Is It Ok For A Christian To Masturbate?

How about you? Fav Christian/Secular songs?

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Every Christian teacher believes his interpretation of the scriptures to be an accurate and biblical interpretation.

Yet every Christian teacher is criticized - their interpretation is wrong (to some degree).

So tell me, who’s right?

Edit: Read this. Thanks, Tiff!

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Last week I wrote about false assumptions and how Christians suffered in the past because of them just as atheists suffer today.  Atheism doesn’t have a philosophy or principles to counter these false assumptions any more than it has a philosophy or principles to deserve them.  Secular humanism does put forward a set of positive traits and promotes a world view.  These are:

1. Need to test beliefs
2. Reason, evidence, scientific method
3. Fulfillment, growth, creativity
4. Search for truth
5. This life
6. Ethics
7. Building a better world

The first one I wish to discuss is the need to test beliefs.

Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith. Read the rest of this entry »

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I like this search so much that I thought I’d skip the normal Your Searches blog and instead put it into a decent post.

You said:

how to pick up a christian chick

I say:

I struggled with this for years and years. I tried it all: church, friends of friends, work, parties, clubs, the beach, even online dating.

Here’s was my problem: I was praying for God to send me a girl who was passionate about him…a girl who loved him more than she would ever love me…a Proverbs 31 girl, as they say. All in the mean time I was livin’ it up - parties, girls, booze, you name it!

One day I took a step back and thought about it: how am I gonna ask God for a neatly wrapped package when I’m an absolute mess? If “my girl” is praying for a responsible, passionate man who fears and loves the Lord, has a job, pays his bills, and is ready to lead a family, how pissed would she be if God gave her me - a hack!? I know I’d be mad if I was honestly pursuing God and he gave me some busted chick who was no more than a lip service [fake] Christian. My situation neither added up nor made sense.

It wasn’t until I REALLY put my focus on God that Tiff (my hot Christian chick) came my way. Guys, you know if you’re REALLY focusing on God. I lied to myself for many years. Don’t be like me.

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I know a family who quickly introduces themselves as Christians whenever they can. This same family constantly has empty beer cans, liquor bottles, and cigarette boxes scattered all over their porch. I have a very hard time not judging them. Would you?

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I wonder if you’d vote real quick:

For the record, I’m voting ‘no.’

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

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Yes, you read the tile right. This post is really about masturbation. Many topics, masturbation included, are very taboo in the church. Unfortunately, it’s typically these very topics that many Christians wrestle with the most. Rather than tackling these uncomfortable topics head on, often times we ignore them and allow them to inflict much more damage on us then they should ever be able to. I haven’t shied away from the uncomfortable posts in the past, so why start now?

What Do Christians Think About Masturbation?

Leviticus “clearly” instructs us not to masturbate, right? Oh, it doesn’t? Many teach that Leviticus is all we as Christians need to know concerning masturbation.

Many Christians argue that it’s perfectly fine to masturbate as the bible never clearly addresses the subject. They say that Leviticus was cultural and doesn’t apply to us.

I remember a day many years back when I wanted to know if it was ok for me, a Christian, to masturbate. Desperate for an answer, I turned to the one place where you’re guaranteed to find a wide variety of opinions: Google. Click after click, bible verse after bible verse, opinion after opinion, I finally found a site (dedicated to Christian teens, nonetheless) that caught my eye.

The article was written by a Christian youth pastor (if I remember correctly) in his mid 20’s. He was wearing cool eye glasses, an earring, and he had a soul patch. This dude was hip! He wrote in a way that I could relate with. His lengthy article can be summarized as this: masturbation is okay as long as you don’t lust.

Jackpot! A Christian, a pastor at that, just told me that I could masturbate. All I had to do was not lust. How hard could that possibly be? That was all I needed to hear. I shut and locked my door and dimmed the light.

Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the details.

So What’s The Verdict?

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t masturbate without lusting. Over time, I tried this method a few more times. I’m relatively sure that I was able to do it without lusting one time, but it was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do…and definitely not worth the effort. Soon I realized that this wasn’t gonna work for me.

I felt convicted. And guys, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what it comes down to. 

There are so many gray areas that we Christians worry so much about:

• Can I smoke?
• Can I lust over my wife?
• Can I get tattoos?
• Can I pierce my [body part]?
• Can I wear a bikini to the beach (insert joke here)?

I feel that we (Christians) tend to give undeserving attention to these questions. Some people, heck, some RELIGIONS base their entire existence on these silly details. They major in the minors and seemingly miss the beauty and power of the Gospels.

To be fair, I believe that the masturbation issue, along with many other “gray area” questions are important and DO deserve some attention.

Putting Words Into Action

A few years back my pastor, Greg Surratt, put together a list of twelve questions that he challenged a Christian to ask oneself when faced with one of these “gray area” questions.

1. Is it beneficial to me personally and to the gospel? 
2. Will I lose self-control and be mastered by what I participate in?
3. Will I be doing this in the presence of someone who I know will fall into sin as a result?
4. Is it a violation of the laws of my city, state, or nation?
5. If I fail to do this, will I lose opportunities to share the gospel?
6. Can I do this with a clear conscience?
7. Will this cause me to sin by feeding my sinful desires?
8. Am I convinced that this is what God desires me to do?
9. Does my participation proceed from faith in Jesus Christ?
10. Am I doing this to help other people, or am I just being selfish?
11. Can I do this in a way that glorifies God?
12. Am I following the example of Jesus Christ to help save sinners?

So, can I masturbate?

1. I cannot justify masturbation as being beneficial to me. Save the “health” responses.
2. Personally, yes. Masturbation clobbers and consumes me. 
3. Hopefully not.
4. No.
5. No.
6. Absolutely not (again, that’s a personal conviction).
7. Oh yeah. Lust.
8. No.
9. No.
10. Being selfish.
11. I seriously doubt that.
12. No.

I cannot justify masturbation. Rather than throwing a blanket “Christians’ shouldn’t masturbate” statement out there, I’ll leave it at this:

Take it up with God. I’m sure he’ll give you direction.

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Richard Dawkins wrote that the God of the Old Testament was:

arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully¹

Thomas Jefferson even described the God of Moses as “a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”¹

There is little chance that a believer in God will accept that this is a fair assessment of the divine character.  A Christian might even be offended by such a callous description.  The argument is that this isn’t the God that is worshipped or that this was the God that was needed for humanity of the times.  There may be other explanations or justifications beyond these, I don’t know.  I suspect that the mythology of flood stories and creation arose from other religions, that they were borrowed from Egyptian, Persian and Greek myths.  If not then it is almost guaranteed that the oral histories were corrupted and exaggerated over time.

Whatever the truth I think it is fair to regard the Old Testament reports on the character of God as a product of the times.  Harsh realities make for harsh gods after all.  Actually, that’s a little unfair.  Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Numbers, Exodus.  They have the real dodgy stuff in.  They show the patriarchal, limited view that the human writers put forward as gospel.  It really is no wonder that the New Testament is where Christians concentrate their beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »

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My Psychology professor asked us to answer two questions today:

1. Are you the person you are today because of your genetics or because of the environment that you grew up in/are currently in?
2. What is it about those who bounce back from tragedy that separates them from those who don’t?

My answers:

1. Although I believe that both genetics and environment play a part in the development of a person, I strongly believe that a person’s environment is a greater factor. I believe that you inherit many tendencies from your parents (temperament, patterns, etc), however, I a person will typically become like the people she surrounds herself with, adapting to the environment in which she spends most of her time. Poll “troubled” adults and you’ll find very similar childhoods. Poll promiscuous women. You’ll find similar childhood/parental patterns. Poll people who prefer living in the city. Poll people who like cats. People who don’t eat certain foods. Of course their are exceptions.
2. I believe that any person can recover from any tragedy by surrounding themselves with a solid social group, being honest, open, real and transparent, and by acknowledging their tragedy and having a strong enough desire to move on.

One guy used this example to justify his answer of environment for question 1: if you were to take the infant son of Saddam Hussein and raise him in a decent American household, the boy would grow up as any other American child would, never knowing anything about Iraqi “activities” or “ways.”

Another guy answered “faith” to question 2, which I thought was neat.

How would you answer?

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Do you guys think that children should be spanked?

If not, do you think spanking should be illegal?

If you have children, do you spank them? Why or why not?

Were you spanked?

Leave your comments here.

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